(CNN)Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.
The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.
The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers. One reason the nation's intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo is a reliable, sensible source. Go to the link and read more about this. While it's fun to make jokes about Trump, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that these are also serious allegations. Here's what Marshall says at the end of his report:
6. Some people are saying that we shouldn't be looking at these news reports through the prism of the credibility of the document but rather the intelligence community's retaliation or warning to Trump. I don't think we can rule that out. But as much as we may dislike Trump, intelligence agencies using the information they gather against an elected President is a very bad thing. We shouldn't lose sight of that. Of course, we should also not expect our spy apparatus to cover for presidential wrongdoing or leave the country vulnerable to foreign subversion. Regardless this is extreme high-wire behavior for the whole country, whatever the underlying facts. It's bad from every different direction that we're here. 7. A lot of the information in this document matches up pretty well with circumstantial evidence about Trump's business dealings with Russian oligarchs and organized crime, and the leverage they have over him.UPDATE:Trump has claimed that he has no investments in Russia. That may be true, but we don't know (since he won't release his taxes, how can we be sure. Trump is on record as being a bullshi##er and a liar), but his son, Donald, Jr., is quoted in the July 29, 2016, Washington Post article on Trump's Russian connections saying this:Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. made that very claim at a real estate conference in New York in 2008, saying “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” Donald Trump Jr. added, “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”Trump may not have investments in Russia, but according to Donald Trump, Jr., Russia has investments in Trump, Sr.

23 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Oh goodie. Our very own "golden shower" president.

Make America Golden Again!

A confidential dossier released by BuzzFeed news that is unconfirmed but is credible enough to be presented to President Obama alleges that the Russian Federal Security Service has video evidence of Donald Trump engaging in “perverted sex parties” that include hiring prostitutes to urinate in front of him on the bed that President Obama and his wife shared at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton.

If true, the information suggests that Moscow has assembled damaging information — known in espionage circles by the Russian term “kompromat” — that conceivably could be used to coerce the next occupant of the White House. The claims were presented in a two-page summary attached to the full report, an addendum that also included allegations of ongoing contact between members of Trump’s inner circle and representatives of Moscow.

WASHINGTON ― A left-wing political group released a new video Monday of a counter-sting that has uncovered evidence of right-wing activists trying to sow chaos at Donald Trump’s inaugural ceremony, an effort to portray critics of Trump who march against him as violent fringe figures.

The counter-sting, carried out by The Undercurrent and Americans Take Action, a project of a previous target of provocateur James O’Keefe, managed to surreptitiously record elements of O’Keefe’s network offering huge sums of money to progressive activists if they would disrupt the ceremony and “put a stop to the inauguration” and the related proceedings to such a degree that donors to the clandestine effort would “turn on a TV and maybe not even see Trump.” To have riots blot out coverage of Trump, the donor offered “unlimited resources,” including to shut down bridges into D.C.

The Undercurrent, led by executive producer Lauren Windsor, is sponsored by American Family Voices, which was among a constellation of groups infiltrated by O’Keefe’s Project Veritas during the presidential campaign, an effort to link Democrats with voter fraud.

It would actually be best for all concerned if whatever information they have were to be, er, leaked as soon as possible. If it's public knowledge, at least Trump can't be blackmailed with threats to reveal it. If it's damning enough, it could help get a critical number of Congressional Republicans on board with impeachment. Even Trump wouldn't really lose anything. Given how many people already seem to know the information, it's bound to come out eventually, and his being President will make it a top-level news story.

The golden-shower thing is objectively trivial, but as a source of jokes and jibes it will be without parallel. Does Trump really want to go through the next four years being known not as Putin's Poodle, but as Putin's Latrine?

Journalists, politicians, FBI head, Comey, have known about this for months. Reports claim there are errors in the dossier, but errors and questions of veracity never stopped the right wingers from smearing Hillary or anyone. General Flynn's child porn smear on Hillary, for example.

The facts are unclear, but we know enough about Trump's revolting persona to allow that there's more than a ring of truth to it.

In 9 days trump will be sworn in as POTUS, and the country and the world is talking and joking about trump allegedly watching prostitutes perform golden showers in his hotel room while visiting Russia, and possible Russian dossiers on more damaging material about trump.

Replacing Obama with Trump is as depressing as it gets, all right. It's not even from the sublime to the ridiculous, it's from reaching for the stars to wallowing in the toilet.

But let's not deny ourselves whatever amusement we can derive from GoldenGate and whatever other scandals dribble out in the future. Even if this turns out to be yellow journalism and Trump is innocent, he shouldn't be able to relieve himself of the scandal so easily -- not after all the falsehoods he spread about Obama's birthplace. He's such a whizz at trashing people, let's see how he likes being the target for a change.

Here is what I fear. I do not believe Mr. Trump is smart: smart people do not dismiss expertise. They know what it represents. He does not. At best, I think he can be credited with what Joyce called "peasant cunning," an ability to win the small game, over and over, without understanding the big one. And because he is not smart, he doesn't even understand that there IS a big one.

Why does this matter? Because I don't think he knows or understands that his balls are in a sling. He knows nothing of international relations (except how to manage debt, and even there the saber-rattling against China is foolish at best). The fact that he cited the Kremlin to dismiss these allegations should give everyone the bends.

No, I think he is seen as an amiable pitch man, a salesman, this time of low-hanging distractions that keep us from thinking of the long list of government outrages being perpetrated this week, and which will only get worse.

Ryan & McConnell: Hey, we need to redistrict this Latino neighborhood to dilute the vote. Can you tweet about Justin Bieber being an illegal immigrant? Trump: OK.

And that's all we hear for three days. Look, I like pee jokes as much as the next twelve year old boy, but our senses of humor are a tool being used against us.

Having DJT as the President was preventable by the DNC. All they had to do is let candidates compete for the nomination instead of selecting their candidate eight years ago and not looking at anyone else.

They were active in trashing Bern and not allowing anyone else on the ticket so if they want to cast blame, look inward.

Obamacare is such a great program that democrats are trying to get out from under it as fast as they can. Did you hear Schumer say the republicans will own it. At least he is not as bad a slimy reid.